Bioacoustics of Leptobrachella liui

The advertisement call of L. liui ( Fig. 1 ) consists of multiple pulsed notes, and is highly amplitude-modulated, with amplitude peaking towards the start of each call. Calls of the five males consisted of 3.11 ± 0.35 notes (range 2–4 notes), with one pulse per note, CD of 0.063 ± 0.008 s (range 0.026 – 0.078 s), CTI of 72.04 ±1.96 dB (range 67.63–79.09 dB). The DF ranged from 4814.5 to 5489.6 Hz (average 5234.4 ± 143.4 Hz), whereas the F0 ranged from 811.8 to 1179.5 Hz (average 968.0 ± 73.7 Hz). The F1, F2 and F3 were emitted from 1693.4 to 2419.9 Hz (average 2050.9 ± 150.5 Hz), 2632.0 to 4049.7 Hz (average 3215.8 ± 391.4 Hz) and 4161.9 to 5258.3 Hz (average 4635.3 ± 267.6 Hz), respectively. The CV W of CD, NN, CTI, DF, F0, F1, F2 and F3 were 9.6 ± 4.1 % (range 4.0–15.5 %), 6.2 ± 6.7 % (range 0–16.1 %), 1.9 ± 0.5 % (range 1.2–2.3 %), 1.8 ± 0.9 % (range 0.9–3.2 %), 7.1 ± 1.9 % (range 4.3–9.7 %), 5.7 ± 2.3 % (range 3.1–9.3 %), 6.3 ± 3.5 % (range 3.0–9.3 %) and 2.7 ± 1.0 % (range 1.4–3.7 %), respectively. The ratios of CV A /CV W in CD, NN, CTI, DF, F0, F1, F2 and F3 were 1.3, 1.8, 1.5, 1.4, 1.1, 1.2, 1.9 and 2.2, respectively. The advertisement call of L. alpinus contains approximately nine notes, with average CD of 0.270 ± 0.069 s , average DF, F0 and F1 all of 6700 Hz ( Xu et al . 2005 ). The advertisement call of L. oshanensis consists of three notes, with average CD of 0.046 ± 0.013 s (range 0.029 –0.067 s) and DF ranging between 4402–4633 Hz (average 4521.9 ± 79.6 Hz) ( Jiang et al . 2002 ). These reported call parameters are different among the three Chinese endemic Leptobrachella species, and could be helpful in species identification in the field. CTI, DF and F3 are classified as static traits in L. lilui , whereas other parameters are intermediate due to their average CV W between 5 % and 10 %. The ratios of CV A /CV W in all parameters were more than 1.0, suggesting that advertisement calls of L. liui could play a role in individual recognition.